


On RWBY

by Lithos_Maitreya



Category: RWBY
Genre: Analysis, Essays, F/F, F/M, Gen, Multi, Open to discussion, Other, debatable - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-10
Updated: 2017-03-01
Packaged: 2018-09-07 15:16:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 19,703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8805883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lithos_Maitreya/pseuds/Lithos_Maitreya
Summary: A series of essays discussing various themes and character points in RWBY. Most will be debatable, some will be polarizing, and conversation is welcome regarding all of them. If you manage to convince me I'm wrong, I may even retract an essay.
Trigger warnings: I will discuss shipping, and I will argue that some are canon and others are not. If you can't deal with the idea that your particular ship isn't going to happen in the show, I recommend you avoid those essays at least and potentially the series as a whole. I will also discuss the merits of Volumes 3 and 4; if you can't stand the idea that someone might disagree as to whether the latter part of canon is good, you might want to avoid the pertinent essays to that topic or, again, the series as a whole.





	1. Not a fairy tale: RWBY and thematic consistency

**Author's Note:**

> If you clicked to come to this page, you already know you're not here for a story. I found Yangalysis a few weeks ago (for the record, I think the poster is smart but not unilaterally correct) and after getting involved in a few discussions of RWBY, decided to throw my two cents into the FNDM properly.
> 
> The two trigger warnings in the summary are here reiterated: I will discuss shipping, and I will discuss the merits of the later volumes. These two triggers are numbered, respectively, one and two. The following is the table of contents for this series, and I will mark each essay with the trigger topics it deals with.
> 
> 1\. Not a fairy tale: RWBY and thematic consistency (2)  
> 2\. Jaune Arc: short, sweet, rolls off the tongue, half of us hate it  
> 3\. Heroism, professionalism, and Ruby Rose  
> 4\. Devining love and romance in the context of RWBY (1)  
> 5\. Cinematography, objectification, sexualization, and agency  
> 6\. Semblances as character flaws  
> 7\. A textual justification for Bumblebee (1) (2)  
> 8\. White Rose: why it's not canon (yet) (1)  
> 9\. OCs: why RWBY has so many, and why so few are good  
> 10\. Yang: abandonment and intimacy (1) (2)  
> 11\. Black Sun: why it isn't canon (but is cute anyway) (1)  
> 12\. Taiyang: parenthood and flawed characters (2)  
> 13\. Renora: contrast, attraction, and intimacy (1)  
> 14\. Deceptively monochrome: morality in RWBY
> 
> With all that out of the way, please remember that this is an essay, not a story, and that skimming totally defeats the purpose of reading at all. Don't just pass over this when you have a spare minute--take a while to unpack what I'm talking about, please, and I would love to hear anyone's thoughts in the comments. (Note that I have a spacebattles mirror for this, as well, available here: https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/on-rwby-essays.469091/ .)  
> With all that said, enjoy.

Long before the first episode of _RWBY_ ever aired, those following it were already well aware of a few fundamental facts about the production team’s character creation process. Fundamental to this process was inspiration: every single member of the titular team, and most other characters besides, are inspired by at least one figure from a ‘fairy tale,’ a story which, culturally, has a tradition of being read to children.

The reasons for reading these fairy tales to children are varied, but many are read for the same reason that Aesop’s fables often are: for purposes of moral instruction. Moral instruction is, of course, not limited to children—what sets fairy tales apart is the transparency of their morals. For instance, the story of Goldilocks, from which Yang derives her inspiration, is quite blatant in its moralizing about thievery as a particular symbol for selfishness in general.

More recent to history, however, is a tradition fairy tales have gained for having neat, tidy endings, in which all the protagonists end the story better-off than before, and all the antagonists have the opposite trajectory. This is, of course, not at all consistent with the original form of many of these stories—one need only read _Grimm’s Fairy Tales_ to see that, in their original form, many of these stories were far less clean.

Much of the RWBY fandom has, in the past year, been very upset with the dark turn the series has taken with the later part of Volume 3. That, in and of itself, is perfectly reasonable. Dark fiction is certainly not everyone’s cup of tea, and even if it _is_ , there’s no obligation for someone who likes, say, _Worm_ or _Warhammer 40K_ to like everything that gets thematically and tonally grim. What is unreasonable is when these fans accuse Rooster Teeth of ruining Monty Oum’s vision by taking what was meant to be a lighthearted show and turning it _into_ something darker.

The discussion of whether the author/creator’s intent in creating a work of art should be considered in interpretation is an essay in itself, and one that’s on the short-list of potential entries in this series. But if we avoid framing the issue in terms of Oum’s original vision, it can be alternatively stated as “a thematic shift, which may have occurred during Volume 3.” The question, then, is whether _RWBY_ , in its trailers and first two volumes, was thematically different from what it has become in Volumes 3 and 4.

This is where fairy tales come in. From the first the fans-to-be saw of _RWBY_ , there was already an inextricable link between the show and fairy tales as a concept. That connection was hammered in until it was absolutely integral to an understanding of the series, by way of character names and inspirations—Ruby’s absolutely transparent link to Little Red Riding Hood, Weiss’ literal translation of the name Snow White, et cetera.

But, very quickly, the fans were introduced to the Creatures of Grimm. On the surface, these seem like bland, relatively-uninteresting monsters necessary to provide an antagonist which is morally simplistic enough to be an acceptable target for over-the-top combat of the type Oum was known for before _RWBY_ ever came on the scene. I confess myself to have dismissed them as such when I was first introduced to the series as well. To leave our analysis at that, however, is to disregard one more fundamental link to fairy tales—the Creatures are named after the Brothers Grimm, who provided the western world with the original printed compendium of these fairy tales which inspire the whole series.

That has plot implications, but that’s not the point—it has thematic implications, too. _Grimm’s Fairy Tales_ is notoriously dark, and not at all the neat ‘happily ever after’ sort of fairy tale we get today. The fact that they are present in a series inspired by fairy tales means that this darker side to that inspiration is not being disregarded.

However, there is an intuitive explanation of this: The main characters are visibly fighting against this darkness. That’s their whole purpose, as Huntresses. This implies that the fairy tales are fighting for the right to a “happily ever after.” While this is true, it does not so much conclude the issue as beg a further question: who is winning that fight?

The answer to _that_ didn’t become clear until Volume 3, but there were hints as early as Volume 1, when an entire arc was built around racial relations. An issue as complex and historically charged as racism is _not_ something fairy tales have a habit of addressing, and its inclusion adds a whole level of darkness to the series’ tonal waters. When you consider that _RWBY_ doesn’t approach it from the simplistic stance of ‘racism is bad’ and instead uses Weiss’ complex relationship with the faunus to explore it more deeply, a new layer to _RWBY_ ’s connection to fairy tales appears.

_RWBY_ may have been inspired by fairy tales, but from its inception it was clearly a _subversion_ of them, not one itself. Fairy tales don’t approach racism from a morally complex angle. Fairy tales don’t deal with the interfacing of attraction, romance, and self-actualization the way _RWBY_ does in Volume 2’s first few chapters, with Weiss, Neptune, Sun, Blake, Yang, and the entirety of JNPR all wrapped up in a deceptively simple high-school romance melodrama. (That’s not just one essay, it’s several, many of which are already planned.)

But the nail in the coffin, as it were, is in Yang and Blake’s powerful dialogue in Volume 2, Chapter 6. In this chapter, Yang explains to Blake her family history—how her father’s first lover, Raven, was her mother, and then left her to him, after which he and Summer Rose had Ruby. It may not be immediately obvious why this is fundamentally important to _RWBY_ ’s link to fairy tales, but there is one aspect of fairy tales that has thus far gone unmentioned because of its ubiquity: true love.

The idea of true love, soulmates, and the naturality of monogamy is absolutely essential to any fairy tale which has even a hint of romance in it. That’s basically a fact, at this point, although there may be exceptions I haven’t heard about. Yang’s narrative totally subverts that in the context of _RWBY_ —regardless of what exactly happened between Taiyang and his two partners, something went awry in terms of love. If the Grimm, the racism, and the deceptive harshness of more than one part of the soundtrack ( _Red Like Roses Part II_ , _Mirror, Mirror_ , and _Time to Say Goodbye_ all come to mind), this moment should be entirely enough to demonstrate that RWBY’s link to fairy tales is one of subversion, not of imitation.

When viewed in that lens, the shift in Volume 3 makes sense. As Roman Torchwick said in Volume 3, Chapter 11, “The real world is cold. The real world doesn’t care about spirit.” The protagonists don’t win every engagement outside of fairy tales. Sometimes they lose; sometimes they lose catastrophically. We’d already seen that Cinder had villainous plans, but many of us never imagined that they would actually work—and when they did, it therefore came as quite a shock.

This is why, although Volumes 3 and 4 have sometimes been quite literally painful to watch, I continue to maintain that _RWBY_ gets better with each season. Each season widens the lens a little further, and with each one we see a little more of its thematic content. As of Volume 3, we’ve moved past the misdirection part of the subversion and can get on with the real meat of the show, thematically. I, for one, am very much enjoying the ride.


	2. Jaune Arc: short, sweet, rolls off the tongue, half of us hate it

Few major protagonists in popular fiction are as divisive as Jaune Arc, and even fewer for similar reasons. I’ve heard posts on this very site saying he was more interesting than any of the members of RWBY, and that he was the least compelling character in the series (these posts were within a single page, so it’s easy to imagine what the thread must have looked like). I’m sure we’ve all seen the argument before. Rather than try to make a value judgement on either of the two viewpoints, let us instead dig a little deeper. Here is a question that is too seldom asked: what is it about this one character that makes him so contentious?

This is an issue that it would be wise to tackle chronologically. Let us begin at the beginning, then, with Jaune’s first appearance in _RWBY_ Volume 1, chapter 1. Before he is even introduced by name, all we know of him is that he gets airsick, but that scene has some further implications. First, Jaune has already been painted as the ‘unpopular kid’ in the context of the school. We see Yang—who trips multiple flags for ‘popular’—judging and deriding him before we ever hear his voice. This scene, thus, is _already_ polarizing—there are those who sympathize with his being socially ostracized, and there are those who sympathize with Yang’s disgust over his literally vomiting on her.

It pays to remember that neither of these perspectives is wrong by any real metric. Yang has done nothing malicious, and nor has Jaune. But already, before the character has spoken a single line, he has developed two distinct camps—those who find him sympathetic, and those who find him annoying. This trend only continues.

In Volume 1, chapter 2, he carries the first character shot of the chapter, by vomiting into a basket. This reinforces the earlier-established camps, to some extent, but it also cements the idea that, yes, this _is_ a recurring character. Those who find him annoying are likely less than pleased with that particular state of affairs, and thus like him even less.

But his next scene has him helping Ruby up, and here we come to the crux of the sympathetic interpretation of Jaune. The sympathy of these viewers is, at this point, grounded in a view both camps share—that Jaune is fundamentally pathetic. But Jaune helps Ruby up, becoming the first character (of her age group) to, in a concrete way, help our primary protagonist for no selfish or self-driven reason. (Yang, as we later find, has helped Ruby immensely in the past, but the viewer doesn’t know that yet.)

This follows on the heels of Ruby being alienated by the people we, having watched the trailers, know will become her teammates. Thus, Jaune and Ruby are tied—both have already been ostracized by their peers before school has even begun. To many viewers, this implies and begets sympathy for Jaune, because they sympathize with Ruby simply by virtue of her role as the protagonist, so the similarity extends their sympathy. On the other side are viewers who dislike the fact that Ruby is now being paralleled with this bumbling idiot, and thus dislike Jaune even further.

We could go through several more such moments, but the point is made. Let us instead consider Jaune Arc from another angle, one which is occasionally brought up, usually by his critics—that of the audience surrogate. Many claim that his total lack of awareness as to the setting in which he lives—whereby the other characters are able to introduce, through dialogue, the mechanics of Aura, Semblances, Dust, and the like—are a result of Jaune’s ‘inescapable’ function as a sock-puppet to represent the audience. These critics claim that Jaune Arc has _no_ character of his own expressly because he is not meant to—he is only there to be the audience’s eyes and ears in this world.

(This angle also has implications which should be fairly intuitive, considering the bumbling presentation of Jaune throughout the first three volumes. If Jaune is the audience, then portraying Jaune as an idiot implies that the audience, too, is idiotic. Many viewers do not appreciate this implication.)

There is merit to this perspective, but it does not span the length of the character. As said, yes, he facilitates the necessary exposition in the first few chapters, and in that sense is an audience surrogate. But he also has a few unique character bullets that prevent him from being totally vacuous. In terms of his history, his forged transcripts imply, regardless of how they are interpreted, certain character traits that are not at all universal.

Regardless of history, there is one character flaw that is both distinct enough to be unmistakable, and unique enough to prevent Jaune’s being an audience-surrogate. That flaw is his (admittedly slight and subconscious) objectification of women in the first few episodes. (If you read that last sentence and then had to manually close your mouth, bear with me—it should make sense soon.)

“Jaune Arc—short, sweet, rolls of the tongue, ladies love it” ( _RWBY_ 1.2): this is his self-introduction. It has become almost memetic in its familiarity to the FNDM as a whole. Another, similar line, is “my dad said all women look for is confidence!” ( _RWBY_ 1.4). Consider the implications, especially of the latter. An obvious and inescapable implication is of the ‘sameness’ of women—if all women look for is confidence, then all women are, in some ways, the same. The former has the same implication—if all ladies love his name, then all woman are the same in that way.

Another quote of his from the beginning of the series is “Where and I going to find another nice, quirky girl to talk to?” ( _RWBY_ 1.3), speaking of Ruby. Here he successfully identifies individual traits—albeit _very_ shallow, surface-level ones that a cursory glance at Ruby could pick up—but, importantly, the focus is on talking to a girl, not talking to Ruby or to a friend. The implication is that, in some small, subconscious way, Jaune views women as prizes to be won, and that there is a basic strategy that will work for all of them.

If I seem to be arguing that Jaune Arc is a despicable misogynist, allow me to dispel that notion. Jaune Arc is a seventeen-year-old boy who has not yet familiarized himself with the complex interface of gender and social interaction. It is entirely natural for anyone, in such a situation, to view women as a prize, for the simple reason that that age is the height of puberty and the teenaged sex drive is still dominating the boy’s gender identity. It is also, if not natural, then at least not beyond the pale for Jaune to assume that all women are the same in some way, because—as should be fairly clear from his interactions with them—he’s simply too unfamiliar with the opposite sex to know any better.

However, even if these faults are not unforgivable, they are still faults—more to the point, they are far from universal faults. Not everyone _is_ a teenaged boy, and not everyone _is_ unfamiliar with women enough to not realize that they are each unique. Indeed, the majority of people are neither of these things. Since Jaune has character traits stemming from both, he is demonstrably not an audience surrogate, at least in his totality.

However, if one erroneously assumes that he is, the hatred of the character from a significant portion of the FNDM makes sense. Once again, if Jaune is the audience, and Jaune is an idiot, then the audience is idiotic. This extends to his other flaws. It is not that the FNDM objects to the existence of a flawed character—many of the audience dislike Cinder and her lackeys, but very few have argued that they should not exist, despite the fact that they—especially Emerald—are demonstrably flawed. The FNDM objects to the fact that _they_ are projected as flawed. Which, of course, they are not, but the interpretation _is_ understandable because of the role Jaune plays as a _temporary_ audience surrogate in the beginning of the series.

There is a further layer of complexity to this issue stemming from the saturation of Jaune shipfics, but that is a topic for another essay. (Admittedly, I’m not quite ready to write that topic, so any thoughts on the matter are welcome.)


	3. Jaune Arc: short, sweet, rolls off the tongue, half of us hate it (Additional Thoughts)

A few of the comments on the AO3 version of this last essay have suggested one reason for the dislike of Jaune Arc I had considered before, but managed to completely forget when writing the essay on the topic—that of the overabundance of screentime given to him when compared to the primary characters.

This is a legitimate concern, when framed in a particular way. In terms of episode counts, Jaune arc has four of the sixteen in Volume 1 dedicated to fleshing him out specifically—these being the two parts each of ‘Jaundice’ and ‘Forever Fall.’ When you consider that the titular team has four members, this necessarily means that he had more developmental episodes in that first volume than any of the members of the team for which the show is named, all of whom, many audience members would say, are more interesting.

That is a legitimate concern. However, this discussion is often framed in direct parallel to Ruby’s character development—I, and I’m sure many others, have heard many times the argument that Jaune has had far to much development while Ruby has had none. It is this statement to which I would object. To say that Ruby has undergone no character development in the past 3.5 volumes is to disregard a great deal of progress. However, the details of that are part of the topic of the next essay, so I would rather not go into them quite yet.

Returning to the topic of Jaune, however, there are very few people who would say character development is ever a bad thing in theory. This begs the question: is it the _screentime_ ratio from Jaune to RWBY that the audience objects to, or the _development_ ratio? In other words, if all of the characters had been developed exactly as much as they were, but more of the actual time on-screen was spent with the titular characters, would people still complain? And if the reverse was true—if the same amount of screentime was spent on each character, but Jaune was developed far less and RWBY far more, would people still complain?

The answer should become more apparent when we analyze this properly: rather than discuss it in the nebulous terms of ‘character development,’ we should specifically compare the number and impact of actual developments that each character underwent. Let us focus on Volume 1, because it is Volume 1 that is most objectionable by this argument.

Jaune, in this Volume, received one thematically interesting backstory point (his forged transcripts) and underwent two major moments of growth—the moment he decides not to betray Pyrrha for his own sake, and the moment he steps in to protect CRDL from the Grimm despite their prior behavior. I’m here using ‘backstory points’ as a measure for the number of things in a characters pre-show history that draw the reader’s attention as not just a fact, but a ground for character work.

Compare this to members of RWBY. Blake received at least two backstory point for the combined reveal of being a former member of the White Fang and a faunus, and two major moments of growth—reconciliation with her team as a whole, and reconciliation with Weiss specifically. (These are separate because they allow her to overcome separate issues—the former teaches her that she can trust certain people, and the latter teaches her about the complexities of racism and not to assume too many details from a few). Weiss received two backstory points—her family’s being Dust manufacturers and the war with the White Fang—and two moments of development—her acceptance of Ruby as leader and her acceptance of Blake as a teammate, despite their history.

Ruby and Yang, however, receive _nothing_. At least nothing that can be categorized in this way—Ruby is established as a character, but does not grow over Volume 1, and Yang, at this point, has given few if any hints as to who she really is behind her impressively-crafted façade. Jaune is thus still receiving more development than the _average_ member of RWBY, although two members do receive more than him.

Let us consider a hypothetical: what if Jaune had only undergone one of the major moments of growth he experiences over Volume 1? Either he _did_ throw the jar of sap at Pyrrha, or he _didn’t_ protect CRDL. (This is a truly horrible measure, for the record—this whole affair is necessarily non-arithmetic, and to treat it arithmetically is to oversimplify, but the argument may still be instructive.) In such a hypothetical case, many of the same people complaining over Jaune now would still be complaining, and some would be complaining more because not only did we spend so long on this character, he wasn’t even developed enough. This latter becomes even more true if more of his development is removed.

Whereas, if we consider the alternative hypothetical—that more episodes were dedicated to the titular team, and fewer to Jaune—it at least _seems_ intuitive that fewer people would complain. Thus, we can infer that it is the screentime ratio which is objectionable, not the developmental ratio. (I realize that my arguments are highly speculative, here—any disagreement is welcome. I could not find a better way to frame this discussion.)

Why, then, are some of the fans so accepting of this screentime ratio while others are not? It seems to return to the earlier discussion of sympathy/annoyance. If the character of Jaune Arc, and all on which he’s predicated, is one with whom the viewer can identify, they may not mind his screentime— _especially_ if they identify more with him than with any member of the RWBY members. If, however, this viewer’s response to his original presentation was annoyance, that perception will only make his four chapters drag on and annoy.


	4. Heroism, professionalism, and Ruby Rose

In any discussion of the thematic discourse _RWBY_ presents, two episodes from Volume 2 stick out as absolutely essential. These two episodes, while not lacking in action, were far more focused on character work and analysis than on progressing the plot. Specifically, I refer to Chapters 9 and 10: ‘Search and Destroy’ and ‘Mountain Glen’ respectively. (Particularly the beginning of the latter—it goes on to be much more plot-centric when Ruby encounters Torchwick’s ‘underground crime network’ as Oobleck puts it.)

These two episodes are memorable specifically for analyzing a fundamental aspect of the world of Remnant, and placing out main cast within that setting. Specifically, they analyze the nature of Huntsmen, and the relationship the four members of RWBY have to the profession.

Let us begin, as Doctor Oobleck does, with Yang. “‘Why did you choose this line of work?’” ( _RWBY_ V2C9), he asks her. When she tries to reply with the textbook answer—“‘to fight monsters and save [people]’” ( _RWBY_ V2C9), he cuts her off. “‘No, that is what you do. I want to know why you do it’” ( _RWBY_ V2C9), he says.

Yang’s reply is _startling_. She tells us that she’s in it, quite literally, for the thrills. Helping people is an ancillary benefit. _This_ bit of character analysis is its own essay.

Weiss, on the other hand, puts it in terms of her honor as a Schnee. Well, we’ve _seen_ the Schnees now. Did Jacques Schnee strike anyone as particularly honorable? More to the point, was there an implication of honor in the ‘difficult childhood’ he gave Weiss because of the war with the White Fang?

Blake’s answer is confusing for different reasons. At first, she puts it in strong, idealistic terms of setting right that which is wrong in the world. But when Oobleck asks, “how?” she has no answer. It’s a compelling moment, and a deeply resonant one—we’ve all had moments like that in our lives, when we know _something_ must be done, but haven’t the slightest notion as to _what_.

But the truly fascinating part of this narrative is twofold: Oobleck’s narrative of _his_ approach to the job, and his pointedly not asking Ruby the same question.

Oobleck’s answer to Ruby’s question is much more complex than any of his students’. It is his duty to protect the people, he says, but he can do it better by teaching and passing on knowledge, and by studying the ruins and learning from the tragedy. “‘There is nothing I would rather be’” ( _RWBY_ V2C9), he says.

Let us unpack this. He begins with a narrative about the tragedy of Mountain Glen, and becoming stronger from it, but tempers that discussion with a specific analysis of _how_ he contributes to the idealistic objective. _This is a direct and deliberate parallel to Blake’s response_. Blake had idealistic motives but lacked a specific plan. Oobleck carries the logical conclusion of that idea.

He then moves on to his ‘duty’ as a huntsman. This is pervasive in his dialogue; it is how he frames the whole issue. It is by determining the specific means of fulfilling that duty that he determines the specific _how_ of satisfying his ideals. This talk of duty parallels Weiss’, but again, he builds on it—where Weiss’ duty is to a nebulous idea of her family pride—in a family which, even then, was implied to be morally bankrupt—his is a very concrete duty to the people of Remnant and, more importantly, it is a duty he _chose_ rather than a duty which, as we saw for Weiss in _Mirror, Mirror_ and in Weiss’ number in Volume 4, Chapter 6, was thrust upon him.

But he finishes the discussion with that powerful line—there is nothing else he would rather be. This parallel’s Yang; he, too, is doing expressly what he loves doing. All the ideals and duty in the world are insufficient, in his mind, if the work itself is not fulfilling. But whereas Yang framed it as ‘having fun with benefits’ Oobleck reverses the order: he discusses the profession first and enjoying it afterwards. His structure, then, is ‘doing good, and having fun with it.’

Each of Team RWBY’s members—other than Ruby, thus far—thus has a distinct part of their teacher’s understanding of the job, but each has not fulfilled their potential in that area, and they all have much to learn from each other. It’s a powerful thematic statement, and is indicative of several things—the progress each of these characters has yet to make, and how important their cohesiveness is to their usefulness as Huntresses, among other things.

It pays to remember that this whole discussion continues. Each of these three members of Team RWBY returns to this discussion with the others in Chapter 10. Weiss begins, saying that she wants to ‘make things right’ in her family legacy, more than just uphold it. This parallels what Blake—and Oobleck—said about ideals and ‘doing good.’

Blake continues, paralleling Weiss right back. Her talk about ‘undoing years of hate’ is directly linked to Weiss’ ideas of legacy, and the fact that she was part of that hate through her time in the White Fang makes it, in some sense, her duty to undo that legacy.

Yang, however, has no such parallel, and her expounding on her role is suitably bleak. “‘I want a life where I won’t know what tomorrow will bring—and that’ll be a _good_ thing’” ( _RWBY_ V2C10), she says. I can’t be the only one who paused at that moment to look at her aghast. This is an important moment in understanding Yang and her relationship with happiness, but that’s a topic for another essay. The important point, for now, is that she _isn’t happy_. Not wanting a routine is a sure sign that the routine—the way the world works when it’s settled—is _bad_ , and that’s not a good headspace to be in. Appropriately, she has no teammate to pair herself with, in this scene, as Weiss’ and Blake’s motives are paired. This scene is vital to an understanding of Yang’s difficult and unhealthy relationship with intimacy.

But she has a great deal to say about Ruby. Ruby, she claims, is motivated directly by an ideal of heroism; by a dream of being one of the ‘heroes in the books’ and doing good for the sake of good; helping people selflessly.

Weiss frames this as naivete—‘she’s still just a kid’; Blake retorts that they’re all naïve—‘we’re all just kids.’ Yang disagrees. ‘Not anymore’ she says. ‘Look where we are—in the middle of a warzone and armed to the teeth?’ ( _RWBY_ V2C10) This is powerful because of its parallel to a much later discussion Yang has regarding adulthood, but Yang and Taiyang’s relationship is, again, its own essay.

The discussion winds to a close with a statement about how the Hunt is a job, with overtones of self-sacrifice, but a great number of questions remain unanswered. Primary among these: how does Ruby _really_ fit into this model? Is she really just a naïve child, as Weiss suggests, and is that why Oobleck didn’t bother asking for her opinion? Or is it something else?

Let us begin earlier in the episode with the exposition on Mountain Glen. It is worth noting that it is _Ruby_ , alone among her team, who is first to remember the tragedy of the ruined expansion of the city of Vale. That is important, but let us gather more evidence.

She later, while scouting the perimeter, asks Oobleck why _he_ became a Huntsman, rather than waiting to be asked herself. She also doesn’t waste time asking him why he asked her teammates, instead choosing to take the opportunity to explore the more pressing issue of why the professional chose the profession. Earlier in this same scene, her tone of excitement at the prospect of killing a Goliath is also worth noting.

She is later the one to volunteer for the first watch. And, of course, Oobleck never actually asks her why _she_ chose to become a Huntress.

If Weiss believes that Ruby’s youth precludes professionalism, she is demonstrably _wrong_. Ruby knows the history of Vale _as it relates to Huntsmen_ better than any of her teammates, including the well-read Blake and the wealthy and educated Weiss—and that’s considering the fact that Weiss delivered an exposition dump on the Vale CCT to Ruby earlier in the Volume. Ruby is also as dedicated as Oobleck to the goal of gathering information—but the information she seeks is on the profession of Huntsmen. She will gain less by asking Oobleck why he asked _her_ teammates—his students—about the job than she will by asking him. So she prioritizes.

But beyond any of that abstraction, Ruby is first to sign up for the watch. She waits a beat to see if any of her teammates will take the role, to see if anyone actually _wants_ first watch, but the moment it’s clear no one does, she instantly takes on the role. That, beyond all else, makes her the _most professional Huntress on her team_. Small wonder she was moved ahead two years.

Ruby and Yang have both said, at different times, that she dreams of being like the heroes in storybooks. But one vital thing Yang forgets—and Ruby remembers—about the hero’s narrative is that, although heroes may often get happy endings, that ending is _earned_. The hero must do their job in order to get their ending.

To Ruby Rose, there is no disconnect between being a hero and being a professional. They’re the same thing. A hero is a professional purveyor of happy endings. And with the tragedy of Summer Rose always looming over her, she can say—like Oobleck—that there is nothing she would rather be.


	5. Defining love and romance in the context of RWBY

Romance is an issue not often addressed as a concept in discussions of _RWBY_. We know it’s there, we have shipping wars over it, but we never really try to pin down exactly what it _means_. Some say that romance is poorly-handled in the show; that characters seem to fall for each other without reason or context. Others seem to think their ships, no matter how odd or inexplicable, are unsinkable. But having an actual, constructive discussion about the topic is rare.

This is the thread for it. There are several essays planned which focus on analysis of particular ships, but before we can ever address those, we need to deal with a preliminary matter. We need to define romance. I propose that romance, in the context of RWBY, is intimacy—or a desire for intimacy—with an added layer of sexuality. Intimacy, here, is mutual understanding: characters knowing each other as people in a deep way, similar to how a close reader may develop a complex understanding of a character after considerable analysis. Sexuality, as an added layer, is the simple addition of lust and sexual desire to that relationship.

This definition is absolutely fundamental to any discussion of romance in _RWBY_ , so if anyone has a different working definition I suggest we discuss that before proceeding onto any other essays on the topic. My arguments regarding White Rose, Bumblebee, and Black Sun/Eclipse are all dependent on the definition used for romance, so that definition must be nailed down.

In order to support this definition, I will use three characters who are established in the context of the show as being in love with other characters. These three are Jaune, Nora, and Pyrrha. I choose these three because they seem to have the greatest depth of feeling—unlike, say, Weiss’ feelings for Neptune, there can be no argument that their feelings are shallow or baseless. (Or at least, such arguments would be in the minority.) Given that, then, let us analyze what love means to these three characters.)

Let us begin with Nora. She is established, in the song _Boop!_ , as being in love with Ren. Using that as a point of departure, let us consider the first scene these two have together. Nora’s behavior in this scene is memorable because of how well it introduces the contrast between her and Ren. Viewing it through a lens which assumes her romantic interest, however, yields new information.

Consider the first few frames of her “jumping around” sequence, where her character model leaps around the screen in various positions around Ren’s. Specifically, consider the third and fourth positions of the first shot, as Ren rises from prone to sitting, and look at Nora’s body posture. In the third shot, she is arching her back into Ren in such a way that her rear would be either pressed against his hips or very near to them. In the fourth, her leaning position and, again, arched back frame her breasts in such a way that, if you follow a line directly from Ren’s eyes, he has a perfect view of her cleavage through the heart-shaped hole in her top.

This is sexual flirtation. It is _immediately_ followed by a dialogue about how “they’ve been friends for _so long_ ” ( _RWBY_ V1C4), and the now-memetic line about being together-together. The former is an expression of intimacy, the other part of romance, and the latter directly addresses the romance.

Nora seems to think romance constitutes exactly what I propose: a mixture of intimacy and sexuality. This relationship continues to be fleshed out throughout the later seasons.

But let us move on to Pyrrha. She is fairly well-established as being canonically ‘in love with’ Jaune, although some have called into question the depth of that feeling. These people are generally Jaune’s critics, and their argument points to the audience-surrogate interpretation of Jaune as a reason for both its popularity and its weakness. Pyrrha, one might argue, is fulfilling the cliché role of the popular, skilled girl falling for the bumbling boy meant to represent the audience, giving the audience the vicarious sense of affirmation that comes with the experience. This interpretation is problematic for two reasons.

First, as we’ve already discussed, Jaune is not _quite_ an audience surrogate. It’s debatably _part_ of his role, but not all of it by any stretch. Second, _Pyrrha_ doesn’t fit into her role either. Yes, she’s a famous and skilled girl. But consider, how many people directly acknowledge her fame in canon? Exactly one in the early part of the show—Weiss, who is _herself_ famous and skilled, as well as being filthy rich.

It is established that Pyrrha is used to being in a world apart as a result of her fame. It’s a fundamental character trait. And yet _no one in Beacon makes an issue out of it_. Even Weiss is easily and cordially associating with her as a casual friend by halfway through the first Volume. To say, then, that her role in Jaune’s life is relegated to her fame is to make a caricature where none exists.

More to the point, many have argued that Pyrrha’s falling for Jaune is a result of his ignorance regarding her. The above shows that this is categorically untrue, or at least insufficient, else she’d be in love with every member of the cast, and _RWBY_ isn’t that kind of show get your heads out of the gutter.

“But Lithos,” you counter, “why did Pyrrha choose to partner with Jaune, in that case?” Yes, let us analyze that moment.

We begin with Jaune’s meeting Pyrrha and Weiss. He begins by flirting with (read: sexually harassing) Weiss and completely ignoring Pyrrha. He then turns the same affair on her when she shows even a hint of interest. Pyrrha sees, from this, several things.

First, Jaune is emotionally and romantically immature, if he believes such tactics will succeed. Second, Jaune is unafraid to approach the famous and wealthy. Third, yes, Jaune _doesn’t know her_. Most of Beacon doesn’t pay much attention to her fame later on, but on this first day there Jaune is the first character we see to disregard it.

All of this makes him safe. He clearly can’t take advantage of her, she can trust him to at least _try_ , in his bumbling way, to associate with her, and he won’t be intimidated by her reputation because he doesn’t know the specifics. It makes him an ideal starting point for a partner. But this first impression is far from sufficient for romance.

Why do I say this? Consider Pyrrha’s posture in the early part of Volume 1. There is no physical framing of her body to be appealing, as with Nora—at 4:18 of V1C4, she leans forward in such a way that he has a similar view of her breasts to Ren’s earlier view with Nora, but she immediately leans back after having gently encouraged him with a touch to the shoulder. This is not flirtation, and thus Pyrrha does not seem to be romantically inclined to Jaune _yet_.

That, of course, depends on an assumption that Pyrrha becomes more sexual when she _is_ romantically interested. This she does. Consider a shot which is parallel to that at 4:18 of V1C4—10:12 of V2C5. Again, Pyrrha puts her hand on Jaune’s shoulder for encouragement, and again the positioning gives him a perfect view of her cleavage. This time, however, the touch lingers and the frame remains.

By this point, the dance arc has begun and Pyrrha has fallen for Jaune. And we see that, in her awkward way, she _is_ being more sexual. That whole scene is also riddled with character interaction regarding Pyrrha’s understanding of Jaune as a character—she understands his feelings of inadequacy and discouragement. That is intimacy.

This outlines my reasoning for this working definition of romance. Now let us consider the other end of the reciprocated ship here—Jaune.

In V2C7, Jaune has a few key conversations. First, he talks to Pyrrha about how she’s been placed on a pedestal and is viewed as being unattainable, and then he talks to Neptune about girls. These two conversations are back to back for a very good reason.

“Do you even care about the girls you’re hitting on? How they feel about you?” ( _RWBY_ V2C7), Jaune says to Neptune. It’s a strange line, given that Jaune himself has done far worse than Neptune with respect to hitting on girls without caring about their feelings. In V2C5 he blatantly disregards Weiss feeling about being asked to the dance by him in the scene with the guitar and the slammed door.

Is Jaune a hypocrite, then? Is he chastising Neptune for doing something he himself does? Not at all. Consider that this episode is the last time Jaune _ever_ shows a real interest in Weiss. The picture painted is not of a hypocrite, but of a man faced with his own mistakes. Talking to Pyrrha, seeing her side of it—and seeing, clearly, that _yes_ , she is interested in him (because there’s no real way to take “you’re the kind of guy I wish I was here with” _besides_ interest) makes him rethink a great deal. It makes him reexamine how he interacts with the women in his life.

Jaune sees, finally, that he hasn’t bothered to get to know either Pyrrha or Weiss. He sees that he was treating Weiss as a prize, and Pyrrha as unattainable. He is forced to reexamine how he thinks of women in general, even, because this is also the last episode where he ever engages in any of the sexist subtext that underlined much of his earlier behavior.

And does Jaune, now forced to reexamine his relationship with Pyrrha, become more sexual? Yes. He wears a dress, fulfilling his promise, but it’s not just any dress. It’s a fairly sexual strapless one which accentuates his surprisingly muscular upper body. More to the point, he dances sexually—holding Pyrrha close and dipping her with an uncharacteristic forwardness.

Does he also become more interested in intimacy? This should be obvious from basically the entirety of Volume 3. The entire scene where Jaune meets Pyrrha by the cafeteria while she struggles with the decision of whether to accept the Fall Maidenhood is, at its core, about Jaune’s struggle to understand Pyrrha.

Romance in _RWBY_ is thus demonstrably about the interface of intimacy and sexuality. Using this working definition, we can have much more fruitful discussions about much more contested ships in the future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally intended this essay to be about the Arkos ship. That... did not happen, really. But it established what I wanted it to, so that's good.


	6. Cinematography, objectification, sexualization, and agency

_RWBY_ was once described to me as an American anime about young girls who fight monsters with hilariously complex transforming weapons. To this, I have two reponses.

First, 'American anime' is a contradiction in terms, since anime is, by definition, a Japanese cartoon. Second, if _RWBY_ is an anime, _where is all the fanservice_?

Let me back up. Not all anime is crammed full of fanservice. Nor is fanservice a necessary part of anime. But if _RWBY_ is an anime, then it's a shonen one which derives a great deal from the magical-girl subgenre, which should place it right in the middle of the fanservice sphere. Yet _RWBY_ lacks anything of the sort.

First, what is 'fanservice'? In basic terms, fanservice is a cinematographic technique wherein the positioning of the camera—or perspective, in animated terms—is used to give the viewer a perspective which sexualizes a character onscreen without it being a deliberate self-sexualization on the part of that character. For particularly egregious examples, see _Sword Art Online_ , especially the latter half of the first season, where the entire character of Asuna was largely reduced to a sex-doll.

In _RWBY_ , this literally never happens. We have two of the four primary female characters wearing skirts, which—in shonen and especially magical-girl anime—is an opportunity for panty-shots. These never occur. In the Red and White trailers, despite numerous flips and cartwheel-like leg spreads on the part of both Ruby and Weiss, we are never given a frame wherein we can look up their skirts—and believe me, in researching this essay, I absolutely disgusted myself by checking exhaustively. Even when such frames do occasionally occur in _RWBY_ , such as in V2C10 where Weiss is laying in her skirt with her feet to the audience, the skirt is textured such that all we see is a white space rather than being able to look up her legs.

This is not to say that the girls are not sexualized. Consider the Yellow trailer—specifically, right as Yang walks into the club. Her walking animation _alone_ is sexy, complete with swaying hips and torso. That sexualization continues throughout the trailer. But it isn't fanservice because it's _self-sexualization_. Yang is doing all the sexualizing, rather than the animators with camera position.

Consider also, as mentioned in the previous essay, Nora's introductory montage. She is sexualizing herself with her positioning around Ren, but it's not for the audience's benefit—it's for Ren's. We, as the audience, aren't even given the benefit of Ren's perspective to allow us to benefit vicariously.

In summary, _RWBY_ 's characters, though sexual, are not sexualized from without. Any point wherein they are sexualized is by their own choice and for their own reasons, rather than being arbitrarily done to them from without for the benefit of the audience. But what does this mean? How does this thematically relate to the rest of _RWBY_?

A surface viewing of _RWBY_ often yields an easy interpretation that the show is largely sexless. It seems innocent, and even childlike, especially if one does not view the later volumes. Ruby's particular refusal to be a sexual creature is a part of that, but a larger part is the refusal of the camera and perspective to take part in sexualization. Even Pyrrha and Yang, with their hilariously skimpy tops, are not sexualized by the camera. Even Neo, with her coquettish and flirtatious choreography in her fight with Yang, is not sexualized by the camera. It creates an odd disconnect between the watcher and the characters. The characters are sexual beings, but their sexuality is not conveyed in full to the audience. That is deliberate. The objective of this cinematographic choice is to keep the cast from being objectified by the audience.

Objectification can be defined as the reduction of a character to their physical traits and physical appeal. Again, _Sword Art Online_ provides a prime example, with the reduction of Asuna's character, her voice and impact on the story, to nothing more than a pretty girl without agency, trapped inside a cage as a reward for the male protagonist.

This is central to _RWBY_ , in a way, because of its relation to agency. A fundamental trait of all the lead cast of _RWBY_ is that they all have some relationship, thematically, to a question of agency. Blake's thematic dialogue with the White Fang and the racism against faunus can be framed as a discussion of agency as it relates to structural violence and race relations. Weiss' relationship with her father and her family—especially as established in Volume 4, but also as seen in early Volume 3 with the rejected credit card—can be framed as a discussion of agency as it relates to growth, maturity, and parent-child relations. Ruby, of course, is agency incarnate. No one in the show has ever told her what she can and cannot do, nor could anyone.

Yang's narrative is less pleasant. Yang's great moment of agency occurred long before the series began, when she placed her sister in a wagon and went in search of her mother. As we all know, that didn't go so well. Besides that, Yang's childhood was spent sacrificing herself for the sake of Ruby and Taiyang. Yang's early life, then, is a narrative about the _loss_ of agency; the one time she tried to reclaim it, it ended it catastrophe.

Consider, then, that it is Yang who self-sexualizes more than any other member of the cast. No other member of RWBY or JNPR would willingly allow Junior as close as Yang did, even for a combat advantage. This is no coincidence. It's easy to oversimplify and say that _RWBY_ thus implies a link between sexuality and the loss of agency, but Pyrrha and Jaune and the total lack of an agency narrative in their relationship—or, if anything, the _increase_ of agency as Jaune grows into his partnership—can disabuse us of that notion.

No, the connection lies in the recipient of the sexualization of a given character. When Pyrrha self-sexualizes, it is for Jaune's benefit exclusively. When Nora self-sexualizes, it is for Ren's benefit exclusively. But Yang, alone among the cast, has been shown to self-sexualize for the benefit of the general public, as in the Yellow trailer. Yang, thus, is the only character to deliberately _reduce herself to her own body_. A body has no agency. Thus, Yang's self-sexualization and her hobbled sense of agency are intertwined.

But why is it specifically important that the _camera_ never sexualizes? Fundamentally, the implication is that, since the audience is a general group, sexualizing a character for their benefit would involve a loss of agency. Doing so from outside, however, would be tantamout to sexual violence.

Basically, the thematic discourse _RWBY_ has created regarding sexualization and agency means that, if a character were objectified from without by the camera, it would be tantamount to rape. The deliberate refusal to do so shows self-awareness on the part of the show's creators, and it's part of why I trust them to handle the show's other thematic issues well going forward.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not my best work; probably needed to read more published works on the interface of sex and agency before trying to do it justice myself.
> 
> Also, the Spacebattles mirror for this has started to draw other people. They've written three essays of their own so far, which I've threadmarked there. If you want to see those, I recommend you go check them out. I don't agree with all of them, but they're worth a look.


	7. Defining love and romance in the context of RWBY (Additional thoughts)

In my definitional essay of romance in RWBY, I argued that romance is the interface of sexuality and intimacy. The discussion of my failed attempt at a Bumblebee essay has led me to further consider that viewpoint. It has come to my attention that one issue in that definition needs to be addressed.

Romance in _RWBY_ is at the interface of intimacy and sex, yes. However, that thesis is insufficient. There is a temporality involved: the two components become significant at different times, and even more so for different people.

What am I talking about? Let me explain, starting with Nora and Ren.

These two, especially with the revelations of Volume 4, Chapter 10, are _intimate_. Possibly the most intimate pair in _RWBY_. Nora is sexual from her first appearance—referring back to my previous essay, her posture as early as Volume 1, Chapter 3 is already sexual. Ren, however, is not sexual. Period. There’s no sexual subtext to anything he does with anyone thus far in the show.

By my old argument, this basically means that they are quite simply not romantically involved until he _does_ become sexual. This is a flaw in my earlier argument, because it fails to account for the greyscale between non-involvement and romance. Ren and Nora aren’t so out-of-sync that she’s romantic and he’s not; that would contradict the very idea of their intimacy. No, they’re at slightly different markers on a continuum of attachment, which has a pole at non-involvement and another at romance.

The key to this model is that sexuality is introduced _subsequent_ to intimacy. To illustrate this, let us consider Jaune and Pyrrha.

All the evidence I cited to Pyrrha’s sexual inclination to Jaune occurs _after_ the Jaundice and Forever Fall episodes, which were the moments wherein Jaune acquitted himself in her eyes. Similarly, all of the moments Jaune’s sexual inclination to Pyrrha appears occur after that rooftop conversation where, as I argued in the previous essay, he is faced with the fact of her attraction and allows himself to consider her as a potential partner. Yet the scenes of Jaune and Pyrrha training on the rooftop, both in Volume 1, Chapter 12 and in Volume 2, Chapter 5 both occur _before_ Jaune has established his sexual attraction to Pyrrha, and the former occurs before even Pyrrha has established her attraction to Jaune. These scene both are unique to both characters because _never_ is either character as intimate with anyone else as they are with one another in these scenes. Thus, that kind of intimate primacy is shown to precede sexuality in romance in _RWBY_.

Essentially, this addendum is a recognition that romance, in _RWBY_ , is simply more complex than “sex + intimacy”. It’s a continuum which begins with a steady increase of intimacy leading to an ‘intimate primacy’ wherein two characters are one another’s greatest intimates. Only _after that_ is sexuality added in the final stage of courtship before romance is ‘established’.

This has some implications. First, while we have seen characters who are intimate but are not sexual, we have _never_ seen characters who are sexual with one another, but are not romantic… outside of one-off flirtation the like of which Yang delivers in the Yellow trailer. Second, and more importantly, we have _never_ seen two characters, both of whom have indisputable _intimate primacy_ with one another, _not_ become in some way explicitly romantically involved eventually… with only one exception.

Let me run through the characters to show that this is true. Jaune and Pyrrha, Nora and Ren, obviously. Intimate primacy led to some form of romance, although in Nora and Ren’s case it’s still a somewhat one-sided courtship. Ruby does not have any partner in intimate primacy—she is intimate with Yang, Weiss, Jaune, and arguably Blake, without any one partner vastly outstripping the others. Weiss, too, has no such partner, because although there is an argument to be made for intimate primacy with Ruby, that primacy is (a) not reciprocated and (b) debatable because of all three other members of _RWBY_ and Winter even more so.

(No, I’m not arguing for an incestuous ship, I’m saying that intimate primacy as a precondition for romance outstrips sibling affections, in the context of _RWBY_. Case in point, Jaune’s seven sisters, not one of which has appeared in any capacity, and thus not shown any intimacy with him. You’d think, if they were even _close_ to as intimate with him as Pyrrha, that they’d at least have appeared somewhere in Volume 3 to congratulate him or commiserate with him, depending on where in the volume it occurred.)

Most of the rest of the cast appears in the show too little for us to assume we know their social network, or has another excuse (such as, in Sun’s and Neptune’s cases, being from another continent).

The one apparent exception? _Yang and Blake_.

With this, I leave you until I can get a _properly structured_ Bumblebee essay.


	8. Semblances as character flaws

RWBY is a setting which thrives on individuality. Each character is vibrantly unique: they are flamboyantly color-coded, possessed of bizarre self-designed weapons, trained in totally individualized fighting styles, et cetera. But beyond all of these superficial differences, and regardless of the mostly phenomenal character-specific dialogue and theming, there is a core issue, specifically designed in the setting, which drives home this motif of individuality. I am, of course, referring to the Semblance.

Semblances are unique powers possessed by each character. Most speculators agree that a fighter uses their Aura to fuel their Semblance, but that fact has not _actually_ been confirmed in-universe; for all we know, they could be powered in another way entirely. What we do know is that each character has a totally unique and individual semblance, which they use to great effect in combat. In theory, these Semblances are derived from the same source as characters’ Aura—their soul. As Ruby put it, someone’s Semblance is “what makes [them] special” ( _RWBY_ V2C4).

On the surface, that sounds like a lovely way to portray a character’s strengths. What better way to drive home themes of individuality and unity thereby than to have characters literally fight using their character strengths? Having a character’s in-setting “superpower” derive from their character is a stroke of genius, for character-development and thematic purposes.

But the word superpower has a dark side, especially here (on SpaceBattles, if you’re reading from the AO3 mirror), doesn’t it? Because here, we can’t help but think of that notable work of superhero fiction, _Worm_. And it’s no coincidence that I draw the parallel, because just as the parahumans of _Worm_ are slowly weakened, in character terms, by their own powers, so the characters of _RWBY_ are struggling with a crippling flaw. More specifically, while Semblances do derive from fundamental character traits… but _not good ones_.

Let’s look at examples. I would start with Ruby, but Ruby’s character arc is actually still getting off the ground and I still haven’t managed to tie her to the thesis, so I’ll leave her aside for now. I can give speculative notes later, if desired. Let us begin, instead, with the only character in the show to _see_ this fundamental trait of Semblances: Blake.

Blake refers to her Semblance in Volume 2, Chapter 10. She discusses this in the context of her tendency to flee from her problems in a conversation which will be brought to the forefront of every watcher’s mind when she flees from Beacon in the aftermath of Volume 3, Chapter 11. Yang disagrees with her… but Yang is _wrong_. Blake’s Semblance really is a reflection of her greatest flaw—not cowardice, but a fear of intimacy. It’s a fear which has finally begun to be addressed in Volume 4. The shadows Blake leaves aren’t meant only to take _hits_ for her; they’re meant to protect her from people in general. They are a substitute she can hide behind, both in combat as seen in most of _RWBY_ , and _out of combat_ as seen in _RWBY Chibi_ , episode 20. (Which, of course, is non-canon.) Blake is afraid, not of combat, but of other people in general. She fears both what they might do to her… and what they might do, and suffer, on her behalf, and how much that latter might hurt her.

But Blake is not alone in having a Semblance reflective of her flaws. Weiss’ entire character struggle centers around her inability to distinguish herself from her family. Where does Weiss end and Schnee begin? Where does Schnee end and Jacques begin? These are questions with which Weiss has struggled since her first appearance. It certainly doesn’t help, then, that her Semblance, unlike all others, is hereditary. The thing that “makes her special”, then, _is her family_. It’s a very grim implication. The specific uses of her Semblance—force, time-dilation, and summoning—could possibly also be extended to her character in different ways, but I leave that work either to others or to a later addendum. For now, I proceed.

Yang’s Semblance has been the topic of much discussion ever since Taiyang pointed out a legitimate flaw in her tactics with every poorly-chosen word, phrase, and implication he could manage to cram into a single conversation. But that’s a conversation for elsewhere. Yang has always been self-sacrificing; her mothering approach to Ruby, her willingness to expose herself for Blake’s benefit, and her motives for taking up arms (pun intended) in Volume 4 all demonstrate that. Her Semblance, then, reflects a darker side to this: she is self-sacrificing to the point of disregard for herself. Her Semblance makes her more useful to others the more damaged she becomes. It’s not a healthy power for someone with her particular issues to have.

Ren has been dispassionate since his first appearance… but as we saw in Volume 4, Chapter 10, he was much more emotional before he unlocked his Semblance, and as we saw in Chapter 12 of that same Volume, the _only time_ we’ve seen him get really emotional thereafter, he’s absolutely capable of losing control. His Semblance allows him _not to feel_. And because of it, he’s never had to deal with his feelings. Small wonder he and Nora have been dancing around one another for so long—Ren literally cannot into feelings.

Nora, again, I can’t really analyze. This time it’s because we don’t know enough about the detailed workings of her Semblance. I might be able to theorycraft, but I can’t say anything conclusive.

Pyrrha, however, is interesting. Her Semblance, Polarity, has a fairly intuitive Doylist interpretation: her fame is an attractive and a repulsive force, in that it draws the eye put pushes away friends, and that’s a central problem in her character arc. But that lacks _character_ detail. It is, however, possible to frame it as an issue of her own needs: she competes in these tournaments and fights CRDL solo because she likes the power and _pull_ it gives her, but at the cost that it separates her, _pushing_ her away from others. While it’s not the strongest analysis, I think the tie to her relationship with her fame is strong enough that it certainly doesn’t constitute a counterargument.

Other known Semblances include Qrow, who has managed to alienate or be forced away from everyone he loves and whose character strikes me as oppressively lonely, which is reflected in his Semblance which pushes away his allies and friends. Also, Glynda, who has been forced to pick up the pieces after the great movers and shakers around her—Ozpin, Ironwood, et cetera—have come in before her and done their damage. Notice that Glynda is never first into a fight in all of _RWBY_. I imagine that frustrates her.

Semblances, then, are not at all the optimistic looks into the “strength of the soul” some might expect or believe. Depending on how you frame them, Semblances are either a powerful way to turn a character’s greatest weakness into a strength… or a crippling crutch, forcing a character to rely on their weaknesses and never grow to overcome them. I, personally, think they can be both. This is why I don’t criticize what Taiyang was trying to tell Yang in Volume 4, Chapter 9: although he put it badly, he’s _not wrong_ that Yang needs to grow past her Semblance. Everyone does. Semblances, as long as they’re relied upon, can only _hamper_ a character’s growth, because dwelling on one’s own flaws is not healthy.

Conversely, however, Huntsmen like Oobleck, Port, and Ozpin _don’t use their Semblances_ , and—whatever you might say about Ozpin’s morals or competence—they seem to be far more stable than most of the younger generation. Which, yes, might be partially attributed to their age, but Qrow and Raven are also older and neither of them is especially stable.

But the good example, I think, is Glynda—Glynda, who uses her Semblance, but only when it’s applicable, and who manages to be the responsible one out of her whole group. Glynda, I think, has managed to strike that delicate balance of admitting to her flaws but not dwelling on them. (Ironically, the only other characters who I think strike this balance are Cinder and Tyrian—both villains.) Glynda is proof that there _is_ a balance; that flaws _can_ be strengths without being crippling, and that not all of us have to succumb to our own weaknesses, like Pyrrha, Ren, Yang, and Blake all have or nearly have. Which is nice, because I like to think _RWBY_ isn’t as dark as it might be, and thus far its themes have all seemed to include an element of hope in them.


	9. A textual justification for Bumblebee (RETRACTED DRAFT)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Upon consideration, and after receiving much well-reasoned critique, I have decided to retract this essay. An essay on the same topic is coming, but this is not it. Consider this an early draft, which I leave up for posterity and as a reminder to myself.

Having had our definitional discussion of romance in _RWBY_ using established romantic inclinations, it will now be fruitful to discuss less well-established attachments. Specifically, let us consider one of the more oddly polarizing pairs: Bumblebee, the Blake/Yang pair.

Some preliminary remarks need to be said. I’ve heard a great deal of mud-slinging on both sides of this argument—especially between the Bumblebee and Black Sun/Eclipse pairs. The Bumblebee shippers accuse the Eclipse shippers of pandering to or otherwise facilitating heteronormativity, while the Eclipse shippers accuse the Bumblebee shippers of wearing shipping goggles or being LGBT-obsessive.

In order to head off the worst of this argument, I would like to say that this is not meant to spark a _shipping_ debate. As I’ve defined in the Spacebattles thread of these essays, shipping and relationship analysis are very different things. Shipping is taking two characters, establishing a relationship, and thinking about the dynamic that engenders between the two. Relationship analysis is taking two characters and analyzing the dynamic that _already exists_.

In a shipping debate, for instance, I would argue for White Rose, because I, personally, think Weiss and Ruby have a great deal to offer one another. I would also be appreciative of Freezerburn arguments, because I think Weiss and Yang mesh together very well because of their thematic and stylistic contrasts. This is arguably even more true of Nuclear Winter, the Winter/Yang ship.

None of these, however, are ships I would side with in an argument of relationship analysis, simply because my viewing of RWBY has not demonstrated to me that the characters involved are _at present_ romantically inclined to one another. That is not to say that changes on that score are impossible, only that the ships have no basis in the current state of canon. (White Rose is, of course, a ship which is argued on this score at great length—I will be writing an essay on the topic at some point in the future. At this point, I shan’t be providing any further evidence on the matter. We’ve bigger fish to fry.)

Bumblebee, however, is a ship which I _would_ argue for in a relationship analysis debate. I believe firmly that there is enough evidence in _RWBY_ as it is now to cement the following conclusions: First, that Yang is sexually attracted to Blake; second, that Blake is sexually attracted to Yang; and third, that Blake and Yang share an intimate relationship. As established in my essay on romance in _RWBY_ , these preconditions—sexuality and intimacy—are the fundamental groundwork to romance in the show. This logic suggests that, if these three preconditions are established, we can conclude that Blake and Yang are romantically inclined to one another.

(There is, of course, the narrative context of Adam’s line about “destroying everyone [Blake loves]… starting with [Yang]” ( _RWBY_ V3C11). This has been thrown around as evidence, too. It is undeniable that Blake and Yang are mutually the only character with which the other has been associated with the word ‘love’ outside of blood relatives. But it’s a weak argument, on its own, and I only mention it here because it doesn’t fall into any of the aforementioned categories.)

Let us begin with sexuality, because it is by far the harder issue to prove simply because the characters never talk about sex. Yang’s comment in Volume 1, Chapter 3 is often brought up in this debate: “I know _I_ do,” she says (referring to Ruby’s comment about Taiyang not ‘approving of the boys’ at the ‘slumber party’ that is initiation), followed by a flirtatious growl.

This quotation is used to argue for Yang’s heterosexuality. Those who argue otherwise claim she was just teasing Ruby. I don’t care. The argument is fundamentally unrelated because bisexuality is a thing that exists. Whether Yang is attracted to men has exactly no bearing on whether she is attracted to women in general or Blake in particular.

Yang has an interesting relationship with sex. We see her using her own sexual appeal in a few of her fights—against the White Fang in Volume 2, Chapter 11, against Junior and his goons in the Yellow Trailer, et cetera. I’m sure attentive viewers could point out other instances. But we rarely see her responses _to_ sexual flirtation, because we rarely see her overtly receive it. Offhand, I can think of two instances: Her fight with Neopolitan in Volume 2, Chapter 11, and her fight with Neon Katt in Volume 3, Chapter 5. Let us first note that both instances are other women—this has been used as evidence to Yang’s homosexuality, which of course it is not. A woman flirting with Yang does not imply Yang’s homosexuality because it does not involve Yang’s action, opinion, or self in any direct way.

However, her _reactions_ to both of these instances are telling. First, Neopolitan beings the fight in her usual unruffled, coquettish manner. That, in and of itself, is not unusual or noteworthy—she does the same in every fight she begins. What is intriguing is Yang’s opening. In most of Yang’s fights, she opens with a charge. In this one, she slowly walks towards Neo—in fact, she does this twice over the course of the fight. In and of itself, this means very little—all we know is that it means she’s off-balance. She’s not using her usual strategies, which means something’s put her off from the usual. Given the context, it’s safe to assume it’s something about Neo or Neo’s mien, but that alone is far from enough to prove sexuality—Yang being attracted to Neo is a _reasonable_ interpretation, but it isn’t the _only_ or even the _most_ reasonable interpretation.

Let us proceed, then, to Neon. Neon begins the fight with a comment about Yang’s breast size—a complimentary one, assuming larger breasts are preferred on Remnant in the same way they are here—and later tells Yang that she’s “pretty when [she’s] angry” ( _RWBY_ V3C5). Yang’s response, in both case, is offense or otherwise perturbation. This is off-putting because neither of these comments are strictly offense in the way Neon says them. (Sexual flirtation certainly _can_ be a form of harassment, but Neo’s tone and mien are in no way objectifying.) Again, there are multiple reasonable interpretations on the surface, but in this case, because of the more overt nature of the flirtation, two seem most likely: either Yang is put-off by the flirtation because she is at least partly homosexual, or because homosexuality disturbs her.

Putting aside Word of God which says that Remnant is an ostensibly sexually-equal setting whereing homosexuality is not taboo, the latter is inconsistent with fundamental—even cardinal—traits to yang’s character. Yang is _accepting_. It’s one of her strongest attributes. She has never been shown to judge any character for anything other than actively hurting herself or someone she cares about, period. More to the point, her interactions with Blake and her sympathy to the faunus’ situation in Volume 1, Chapter 11 (“It must be hard to be a faunus,” she says—the only character in the main cast, including Blake, who _directly_ addresses the racist cause of Cardin’s treatment of Velvet) suggest her to be a very non-judgmental person, even compared to her other mostly non-judgmental friends.

This leaves us with evidence that Yang is at least somewhat attracted to women. It’s not comprehensive, it _is_ subjective, there are cases to be made the other way. It’s not a proof, it’s a reading of the text. But that’s enough to be going on with, for now.

Let us proceed to Blake. _Much_ harder. Blake has no fights to point to which have the kind of sexual subtext of Yang’s with Neo and Neon. By the same coin, however, Blake has no sexually-charged interactions with _either_ sex, in general—only with individuals. And even then, they are rare.

The dance in Volume 2, Chapter 7 has Blake dance with both Sun and Yang. Both sides of the debate point, rightly, to this dance as an important scene. But not for the right reasons.

Blake dances more closely with Sun than with Yang, but neither dance is especially intimate—even when they are directly holding each other, Blake carefully maintains a distance between their bodies. Some will be tempted to label this as animation difficulties—I point these people to the later dance with Jaune and Pyrrha. Clearly sexually-charged dancing is something Rooster Teeth is capable of doing. The fact that they do _not_ include it in either of Blake’s dances is thus a matter of deliberate choice rather than animation problems.

People who have done a careful reading of _RWBY_ probably know where this is going. Blake _always_ keeps people at arm’s length. It’s as fundamental a character point to her as acceptance is to Yang, if not more so. Small wonder she does not allow either of her dance partners to hold her close.

Blake has only been held, closely, by two characters in the entirety of _RWBY_ : Yang and Kali Belladonna, her mother—and _don’t_ try to tell me to ship her with her mother. Yang’s embrace, however, is unsolicited—Yang pins Blake’s arms to her sides in that moment in Volume 2, Chapter 6—and so it cannot be used directly to show Blake’s sexuality. However, Blake is not in any way offended or upset by Yang’s embrace afterward, and even takes her up on her offer of a dance, which can.

Again, it’s not overwhelming evidence, and there’s certainly evidence that Blake is attracted to Sun—hell, that’s undeniable—but it does, at least, make the proposition that Blake is sexually attracted to Yang one not totally groundless in the text.

If the above were all the evidence to Blake and Yang’s being romantically interested in one another, it would be a case so weak that a faint breeze could knock it over. Fortunately, it is not. The second part of the argument is based on intimacy, and here is where these two shine.

We begin, of course, with Volume 2, Chapter 6, and the conversation that this debate keeps coming back to. Yang bares her soul to Blake in a very real way. As said before, of course, intimacy between strong friends is not unusual. But Yang _doesn’t share herself_ with people. She has attachment issues, as has become abundantly clear from Volumes 3 and 4.

I mentioned this in brief in my essay on Ruby and heroism, and there may be a full essay on the topic coming, but in brief: _Yang doesn’t talk about herself_. When talking to her teammates about Oobleck’s questioning in Volume 2, Chapter 10, Weiss and even Blake both talk about how their answers didn’t fully reflect their characters. Yang, however, _deflects_ , and talks about Ruby’s character. She says she’s not like Ruby, but she refuses to say what she _is_ like.

Add to this Volume 1, Chapter 2; Yang abandons Ruby to go and spend time with her ‘friends’. Friends which are apparently unimportant enough to be not worth animating and which never appear again. The implication of this, added to the fact that Yang never associates with anyone we do not see her meet for the first time in _RWBY_ , is that she has no significant attachments.

If that does not seem strange, it should. Blake came into Beacon from the White Fang, having never attended a combat school or (probably) associated with Signal’s students. Weiss transferred from Atlas and private tutors, and would almost certainly have no connections among incoming Beacon freshmen. Ruby skipped two years of Signal and left her old friends behind.

Yang, however, came into Beacon Academy after graduating Signal on time. Signal is fairly strongly implied to “funnel in” to Beacon—it’s graduates normally go there because it’s the major Huntsman Academy in Vale. By all rights, Yang should have a good few friendships already established among Beacon’s youngest class, yet she does not. Clearly, for some reason, Yang does not easily form attachments.

I would argue that the reason behind this is her abandonment issues, but that’s beside the point. The point is that she _trusts_ Blake—deeply, intimately enough to share even the darkest and most painful stories of her past. That’s a position no other character in _RWBY_ —and, as implied above, no other _person on Remnant_ —is in, for her.

This isn’t a one-off scene, however. Yang’s last scenes in Volume 3, Chapter 12 are telling in other ways. When discussing the losses brought on by the finale, Yang tells about Weiss’ leaving in a fairly calm way, but when it comes to Blake?

Her voice is breaking, her lower lip visibly trembles as if she’s about to cry (18:25, if you care). It’s the second time Yang has nearly cried _in the entirety of_ RWBY, and both have been because she felt hurt or betrayed by Blake. (The first was at Volume 3, Chapter 8, in case a refresher is needed.)

Yang has most assuredly not gotten over Blake’s leaving by the time Volume 4 arrives, months later. The first shot we have of her outside the character short has her sitting aimlessly on a couch. Many people remember her watching the television. Some have forgotten where her eye went first—to an empty seat beside her and a neat stack of books ( _RWBY_ V4C3, 3:30). The particular framing of the image and shot can be nothing other than deliberate. Only one character in _RWBY_ is associated with books: Blake.

I say again: Intimacy is a _necessary_ , not a _sufficient_ , precondition for romance. But this is a level of attachment that outstrips any other in Yang’s life. Blake visibly means the world to her. It’s conceivable that that kind of attachment might be non-romantic—such relationships do exist—but coupled with the existing evidence to Yang’s sexuality (debatable though that evidence is) it seems quite reasonable to argue that Yang is very much in love with Blake.

But Blake is harder. Blake is, if possible, even more reticent than Yang. She holds everyone, including both Sun and Yang, at arm’s length. Yang didn’t know about Adam—part of why she didn’t know what to watch for when fighting him, although there’s a case to be made that knowledge might not have helped in this case—and Sun didn’t know about Ilya—although, again, whether knowing would have helped is up in the air. But she is trying.

In Volume 3, Chapter 8, she visibly forces herself to take Yang at her word when Yang promises that she didn’t want to hurt Mercury. She’s _trying_ to trust Yang, trying to let Yang pull her out of her shell. Sun, by contrast, has a voluminous number of scenes in which he misunderstands Blake in one way or another. Blake always makes it clear he’s wrong, but never elaborates. Notable instances include Vlume 4, Chapter 3, 13:48—we’re _still_ waiting on a clear answer to what Blake’s true motives are for returning to Menagerie, although we know the basics; Sun, however, is completely wrong, and that’s all she tells him; she doesn’t open herself to be understood better.

Speaking of Sun, a comparison of Blake’s responses to him in Volumes 2 and 3 on one hand and Volume 4 on the other is worth doing. In Volumes 2 and 3 she’s, if not interested romantically, then at least intrigued by and attracted to him. She tacitly accepts his offer to consider them partners for the dance in Volume 2, Chapter 6, blushes at his flirtation in Volume 3, Chapter 2, et cetera. In Volume 4, however, she’s having none of it. Not once has she responded in any way but negatively to his advances or to his silliness in general.

This is suggestive of some fundamental shift she’s undergone as of the Battle of Beacon. It should be fairly clear what caused that shift—no other moment in the battle caused Blake nearly as much distress as Yang’s maiming at Adam’s hands. In a painful parallel of her own bringing Yang to tears only four episodes prior, Blake now cries over Yang. What exactly the shift _is_ , however, is somewhat open to interpretation.

What is clear, however, is that Blake has become less interested in allowing Sun closer afterwards. It is tempting—indeed, it is something I considered heavily until further thought—to say that the change was a step back into reticence: Blake blames her closeness with Yang for Yang’s injury, ergo she’s now not allowing Sun to even be as close as he was before. This is a compelling interpretation… but it has one problem. Blake is visibly allowing Kali and Ghira “in” in Volume 4. If she were truly afraid to allow anyone she cares about to get close to her, that seems like a rather glaring oversight.

I don’t actually know what has changed, in detail. It’s part of what was so frustrating about Sun’s interruption in Volume 4, Chapter 8. Blake was on the verge of articulating that shift, which made her come back to Menagerie. But I know that it has _not_ made her reject the notion of intimacy (indeed, she is more intimate and open with her parents now than she has been with any character prior), but it _has_ made her cold towards Sun. She still cares about him, certainly, but as a friend and nothing more. She has not responded positively to any of his advances since the Battle.

My pet theory is that the battle has brought Blake face-to-face with her romantic feeling for Yang, but until they meet again I haven’t any more evidence to that effect than I have already given.

But Blake, as said before, forced herself to trust Yang in Volume 3, Chapter 8. She has never trusted, in that way (meaning outside of combat), any character other than her parents. It’s _far_ less clear on her end than on Yang’s, but it’s not completely divorced from the text to say that Blake, too, loves Yang romantically.

Since Shipping is Serious Business, I leave you with a final disclaimer: This essay is not meant to convince anyone that Eclipse is ‘stupid’ or ‘wrong’ or even, necessarily, ‘non-canon’ in any real sense. This is meant explicitly to convince the reader that Bumblebee is _not_ stupid or wrong. It is meant simply to provide a textual justification for a relationship for which I believe there to be textual grounds. If I can get the readership of this essay to say that “the evidence for Eclipse _oustrips_ the evidence for Bumblebee” rather than “there is no evidence for Bumblebee” then I will have done all that I set out to do.


	10. Understanding Ozpin's Decisions (WirelessGrapes)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> WirelessGrapes has given me permission to post their essays from the SpaceBattles thread to this mirror as long as I credit the work to them. Consider this that accreditation.

Ozpin is one of the most secretive characters in RWBY, his true fight and motivations are hidden to the viewer throughout the show, and it is finally implied right before his death that he is a puppet master, playing the game of control in the shadows.  This reveal in the second half of Volume 3 throws a lot of his decisions into question, and leaves people wondering why he did what he did, since he can no longer explain (or, at least until Oscar meets with the main cast).

 

So, I'm going to be taking a look at the major decisions that he makes, and the most likely reasons for making them.

 

1\. Inviting Ruby to Beacon 2 years early

 

Ozpin's decision to prematurely invite an, admittedly talented, but raw 15 year old girl to Beacon based on seemingly nothing but a stopped robbery.  After V3E12, we now know that Ozpin knew about the secret powers that her eyes held.  The only things that we know for certain here is that Ruby has special eye powers, and Ozpin knew about them.  Everything else is left to conjecture.  For the purpose of this essay, I'm making the assumption that Ozpin believes that the comatose Fall Maiden will be attacked soon.  Therefore, Ozpin is making his decisions before the Tournament with the purpose of defending Beacon in case of an attack that will come.  Ozpin knows nothing of who the attacker will be, or when it will eventually come, but he knows that the attacker will have half of the Fall Maiden's power.  He knows that Ruby has the ability to combat the False Maiden with her Silver Eyes, and therefore it can be determined that the main motivation of inviting Ruby to Beacon was a play to increase the total amount of anti-Maiden firepower in Beacon.  However, it brings us to our next issue, which is...

 

2\. Not Telling Ruby about her Silver Eye Power

 

So, Ruby has this super secret power that puts her on par with Ozpin himself in terms of raw output, given that she was able to combat the Maiden, and the only other person who was seen to match Cinder at full power was Ozpin himself.  Why doesn't he tell her about it and have her practice in case of Maiden attacks?  For everything that we've seen, Ozpin's decision is based upon a short conversation with her in a police station.  From the conversation, he can gleam that Ruby is a well meaning idealist who wants to be a hero.  She seems to lack social confidence based upon her hesitance to speak, followed by a very fast babble once she started.  Her perceived immaturity is not an incorrect statement, as she does seem to lack the same 'grace' that other students at Beacon have.  So, Ozpin has a girl who he can predict to throw herself into danger to save another, but lacks the self confidence to know that.  If Ozpin were to tell her about her power, it could break her, push her to learn her power as quickly has possible to protect as many people as possible.  Ozpin predicts that telling Ruby about her power would stunt her development as a person, when she is already 2 years behind.  If Ruby is 17, and as self confident (but not arrogant) as her sister, he could safely tell her about her eyes, and let her learn to control them well.  The idea that Ruby would throw herself into her eyes is confirmed later in the Volume, when she pushes herself harder than anyone to try to be the best leader she could be, after Weiss snaps at her for being immature.  Ruby takes the criticism that she might be an inappropriate leader to heart, and would take the fact that she might need to be able to save the world one day to the breaking point.  Which brings us to our next Ozpin decision...

 

3\. Making Ruby the Leader of Team RWBY

 

Yet another decision about Ruby in the first Volume, I promise this will be the last one of these.  For all intents and purposes, Weiss is the 'correct' choice for Team Leader, given her educational background in leading people, as Heiress to the SDC.  She was literally raised to be a leader, and has the self confidence to boot.  But he picks Ruby instead.  Now, of course, given Weiss' reaction to not being picked and later character developments, it can be seen that she would not have been a good leader, as her arrogance and demanding attitude would have likely pushed away her team.  But, this would not have been seen from the surface.  Of course, Ozpin could have come to the same conclusion of Weiss' issues with leading due to her actions during Initiation, but I'm making the assumption that Ozpin only cares about saving Beacon from incoming attack.  Without that in mind, Yang might have been the choice, given her maturity, experience acting as a mother figure to Ruby, and her friendly attitude.  However, with the future attack on Beacon in mind, Ozpin needs Ruby to be the leader, and probably made the decision that she would be leader no matter what from the moment he accepted her.  Ozpin tells Ruby that he has placed a burden upon her, that being Leader is a great responsibility, in V1E10.  However, it is a noticeably lighter burden than the one he is planning for her, to act as the sword that defends Beacon as a last resort.  Ruby is his trump card, and he needs to make sure that she is ready.  Making Ruby leader is preparing her to be the 'Chosen One' in a situation where she can afford to make mistakes.  By making Ruby leader, he is speeding up her social development, and boosting her self confidence to a point where she can learn how to not only use her eyes, but act as a beacon of light for others to follow.

 

4\. Letting Team RWBY Go to Mountain Glenn

 

Ozpin is not deceived by Ruby's attempt at giving him information that she should not have in S2E8, interrupting Glynda before she can question her further, establishing that he acknowledges the fact that Ruby and her team did something they weren't supposed to. This tells Ozpin that she and her team have a tendency to throw themselves into danger to do what they think is right, something that both he and Ironwood say is commendable, given their responses in the police station and the briefing in S2E8.  Since he has not told Ruby about her secret powers, he needs her to be willing to face near certain defeat without much hope to be able get her into a position where she can save Beacon from an attack in the future.  To do this, he provides positive reinforcement throughout the series whenever she jumps into a dangerous situation for good reasons, rather than scold her, as Glynda does.  He is manipulating her heroic tendencies to get her into the mindset of being willing to protect Beacon.  It's kinda slimy, but very necessary, and is an extension of her natural personality.

 

However, he can do this without letting RWBY take the Year 2 mission, by simply following the rules and telling them that they aren't in Year 2.  Of course, he is aware that they are likely to attempt to go regardless, but it is very unlikely that they will be able to get out of the Kingdom discretely.  Ozpin could just send a few Hunter teams to patrol the Southeast of Vale, and call it a day, but he doesn't.  He "sends in the scouts", so to use his own words.  He is fighting an evil shadowy conspiracy with a benevolent shadowy conspiracy.  The necessity for discretion is key.  So, in allowing RWBY on the Mountain Glenn mission, he is aware that the team will most likely poke around, looking for trouble, and that they have a good possibility of finding it.  He creates plausible deniability with sending RWBY on the mission.  If any other team were to search the ruins, they would most likely follow Oobleck, and never find the White Fang beneath them, but if he were to send a Hunter to look, it looks like they're onto Cinder.  So, he allows RWBY to do something that they would try to do regardless, and gives them supervision in a Senior Huntsman in case they find anything.  It is less than ideal for combat, but for his purposes, it hits every necessity while providing a barrier of safety.  In the end, this decision works out rather well, as RWBY is able to discover the Train, and is able to provide advanced warnings for the Breach, resulting in 0 civilian casualties.  This is the second best case scenario for Ozpin, who knows that something will happen, knows where it will happen, but also knows that this is not the big plot.  All in all, this was a good decision by Ozpin.

 

5\. Asking Pyrrha to be the Fall Maiden before the Tournament

 

Bringing Pyrrha into the fold, and the subsequent actions he takes to get Pyrrha to accept his offer, is the least liked of Ozpin's decisions, and is, in my opinion, his biggest failure, but not in the reasons that you may think.  At this point, Ozpin hasn't had any other major discoveries for the purposes of defending Beacon.  The pieces on the chessboard are still hidden to him, while his opponent is able to see his pieces, with the only hidden piece being Ruby's Silver Eyes.  He has to assume that, with the CCT infiltration, his security and intelligence are compromised, and that his opponent knows all of his pieces.  And, by the time the Tournament is nearing to a close, Ozpin is feeling the pressure.  Currently, his only Anti-Maiden firepower lies in himself and a 15 year old who has no idea of the power they possess.  He needs a new trump card.

 

Luckily, Pyrrha Nikos is here to save the day.  Dubbed the Invincible Girl, she is a distinguished warrior in her own right, and, if he knows about her semblance, is capable of defeating any normal Huntsmen in one on one combat.  It would require extensive Dust usage or magic to defeat her.  Thus, he makes the decision to upgrade his most solid weapon into one of his most powerful, by secretly giving her the other half of the Fall Maiden's power.  With that addition, she would be able to combat the other half of the Maiden's powers in single combat, and she can win against almost all weaponry.  With Qrow's knowledge of Cinder's usage of arrows and swords, he believes that Pyrrha, going all out, can turn the weapons of her enemy against them, and win in single combat.

 

Unfortunately, Ozpin _doesn't want to do this_.  He drags his feet with making this decision for as long as possible.  Ironwood is insisting that action be taken in Amber's case, but Ozpin rebukes him, asking patience and subtlety.  When they tell Pyrrha everything, Ironwood is insistent that Pyrrha makes a decision, but Ozpin gives her time.  It is this sympathy that Ozpin has that is his ultimate downfall.  Assuming that the Aura transfer does work, Pyrrha would be almost certainly able to combat the expected enemy, with an additional aces in himself and Ruby.  However, he gives Pyrrha to the end of the tournament, assuming correctly that the plot will come to fruition then.  His only real tactical blunder is failing to account for the possibility that Pyrrha may be the start of the end, and thus delay her ability to get the Maiden's powers.  With the delay at the Coliseum, Cinder is able to reach the Vault in time, and the transfer is stopped.   Asking Pyrrha to be the Maiden is the _correct decision_.  It is the only real decision he can make to ensure that Beacon will not fall.  Unfortunately, his plan fails, and his biggest weapon is neutralized before it can be upgraded.

 

Conclusion

 

All in all, almost all of Ozpin's decisions can be traced back to needing to protect Beacon, one way or another.  Ozpin is playing chess, but he cannot see most of the opponent's pieces, and the moves are not taken in turns.  Ozpin has to not only win against a stacked board, but he has to find out what the stacked board is.  He makes his plays, and almost places himself into a position for the Rook to take the Queen, with the Knight in reserve, but a delay due to sympathy for the Rook's sacrifice results in the loss of the Rook, and the requirement for the Knight to cause a tie.

 

And on that note, I kinda now want to make a comparison of the team compositions of RWBY and JNPR to their chosen chess pieces.


	11. RWBY and Chess (WirelessGrapes)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This essay was written by WirelessGrapes on the Spacebattles thread for this series. All credit goes to them.

The game of chess is a common symbol throughout the series, with the relics in Initiation, the code that Qrow uses when communicating with Ozpin, the logo for the program that Cinder installs on the CCT, and Ozpin's conversations with the Ozluminati. The first thing that must be understood is that the chess metaphor is incomplete at best, due to the intricacies and lack of rigidity in the decision making of real characters versus the abilities for chess pieces to move. The show itself is much more like Go, with its multilateral movement and complex opportunities, but chess is a much more well known game, and thus the imperfect symbol is better understood and more recognizable.

 

To best describe the war between Ozpin and Salem, Ozpin is playing chess in which he doesn't know how many pieces his opponents have, where they are, what they are doing, or when they will move. His opponent knows almost all of his pieces, and the moves are not taken in turns. Essentially, Ozpin is completely screwed. He's fighting a stacked deck, and he has no idea how the deck is stacked, but the dealer can look at his hand whenever they want.

 

With the general understanding of how the game is set up, we can look at who is a piece, and what pieces they are. I will mainly focus on the good guys, simply because they have more evidence to go off of.

 

The two kings are Salem and Ozpin, since they are the two biggest pieces of the game, but they will never attack each other directly. If one ever truly falls, then the other has won. They are the most simple pieces in this game.

 

Teams RWBY and JNPR are pawns, but Ozpin has the plans to make them higher level pieces in time. At the current point in the story, they have very little power compared to the other pieces in the war. Individually, they can do very little against a Queen, like Cinder, but they can get lucky and place themselves into a position where they can take advantage of tiny weaknesses, such as Ruby at the top of the Tower. The only chance that a Pawn has to take down a higher level character is if they get lucky.

 

However, Ozpin has plans to make them much more than that, and their future pieces can be shown by their choice of pieces during Initiation. RWBY chooses the White Knight, and JNPR chooses the White Rook.

 

Knights are very awkward pieces to use, with harsh limitations in their movement that hinder their gameplay viability. However, a well used Knight can use its non-lateral movement to take the enemy by surprise, and take out an enemy piece. This is the description of each member of Team RWBY, and Team RWBY as a whole is a very unbalanced team. They lack any major defensive measure in shields, or heavy weapons to block opponents.

 

First, Ruby uses a weapon that is described by the show as hard to use, unwieldy, but a master of the weapon is incredibly difficult to defeat. In addition, she lacks any heavy defense, making her a glass cannon that requires finesse and skill to fight effectively. Also, she has a secret ability that is hidden to everyone except for Ozpin. Next, Weiss is severely limited by her inability to cause massive amounts of damage, unless she can manage her summons. She can use her glyphs to attack an enemy from odd directions, odd speeds and with odd effects. Her entire combat form is built around keeping her enemy off balance, and attacking from off angles. However, as shown during the Train Fight, if the enemy can get a hold of her angle of attack, she can be neutralized very easily, with having even less defense than Ruby. Third, Blake is an agile fighter that uses a weapon that lacks the high damage potential that Ruby and Yang have, forcing her to fight similarly to Weiss, in which she is simply more agile and fights from off angles. She can throw her weapon and fire the trigger from afar, allowing her to attack from any angle. Following the theme of the rest of her team, she has little to no defense, as her only defense is to dodge. Finally, Yang is the most 'tanky' of the team, but even she has harsh limitations that hurt her defense and damage output. She can tank incredible amounts of damage (see the Yang Death Battle for the math of how much force she can take), but her status as RWBY's powerhouse is dependent on how much damage she tanks. Her biggest feat is destroying a Paladin, which is very impressive, and tanking a hit from a Paladin strong enough to send her through a concrete pillar, which is doubly impressive, but her ability to do the first is dependent on the second. Taiyang says it best in V4E9, "What if you miss?" If Yang can't take hit her shot, she loses. Her 'kill shot' requires her to turn herself into a glass cannon, and so she must choose from high damage and low personal defense, or high personal defense and low damage. In addition, her close range style limits the amount of damage she can tank for her _team_ , which makes her tankiness almost useless for the team.

 

As a team, Team RWBY is an agile glass cannon, capable of acting as an incredibly effective strike team, but almost useless for defending something or forcing a draw.

 

On the other hand, Rooks are very dependable pieces, but lack an 'X Factor' that would let you take out high value targets without high levels of planning. Rooks are best utilized as set up pieces, controlling the board into funneling the enemy into less favorable territory. This is a description of Team JNPR, as they are a very dependable and solid team, but lacks the ability to take out the 'big' targets.

 

First, Jaune and Pyrrha are built very similarly, with sword and shield, the stereotypical split of offense and defense. Pyrrha utilizes her setup for offense more than Jaune, with her semblance and extra forms for her weapon, while Jaune mainly focuses on defense with his simple setup and high levels of personal Aura. The two as a set of partners can hold a line incredibly effectively with Pyrrha attacking, Jaune defending her, and each of them having acceptable amounts of the opposite ability. Nora is a heavy weapon specialist, and the most unbalanced of the team, which is impressive, since she is arguably more balanced than any member of Team RWBY. Magnhild is rather unwieldy, though not as much as a scythe, and she has significant ranged power, as well as area control, with her grenades. Ren is an agile fighter than can fight from both near and far, fighting an enemy fairly straightforwardly, while still slightly off angled. He is not nearly as 'off' as Blake or Weiss, as he specializes in keeping an enemy slightly off balance for his friends to land the kill shots and peppering an enemy with his SMGs. He could cause issues for a slow enemy, but on his own he lacks the firepower to make him much of a threat. As a whole, Team JNPR would fight with Jaune and Pyrrha in the frontline, with Jaune acting as the defense for Pyrrha to make strikes at the line, while they each have acceptable abilities in the other's domains to hold a balanced line. Ren would flit about the battlefield, keeping the enemy off balance and attempting to make openings for the heavy hitter, Nora, to take advantage off. Once an opening is established, the frontline shifts to widen the opening and sets up Nora for the kill shot.

 

Which is, coincidentally, how they fight the Deathstalker. :3

 

Next, the Black Queen is Cinder, given her symbolism is using the Black Queen Virus, and her unique damage capabilities with having the Maiden's power. Cinder is able to 1v1 almost any character on the board, except for other Queens, and can only be defeated by other characters by putting them into weaker positions and letting a weaker piece take them out, like how Ruby does with her SEW power.

 

Ozpin doesn't really have a Queen. He lacks the firepower to fight Cinder 1v1, and it can be interpreted that Amber would have been his Queen. Also, his attempts to make Pyrrha a Half Maiden would have turned her into a Queen as well, as she would have Cinder's solo fight dominance, and massive versatility.

 

Ironwood and Glynda are the White Rooks. Ironwood is a very obvious character to fight, with most of his power coming in the army he possesses. He has high levels of area control with his overall dominance of numbers, but can't really strike an enemy unaware or from odd angles. Glynda's semblance makes it so that she controls the area around her, the literal definition of area control, while she is rather easy to avoid. She is the closest thing Ozpin has to a Queen, but it can be assumed that, since Ozpin didn't trust her against Cinder, that she lacks the overall output to be considered a Queen, which makes her a Rook.

 

Overall, the metaphor and symbolism of RWBY as a game of chess is incomplete at best, but the direct piece symbolism is fairly accurate from character to character, and the contrasts to actual chess can show just how bad Ozpin had it before the Fall.


	12. Semblances and personality (WirelessGrapes)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This essay was written by WirelessGrapes on the Spacebattles thread for this series.

In RWBY, the origin of Aura and Semblances is shrouded in mystery, especially since the characters seem to just accept that they just exist, and that they work. Of course, they have to come from somewhere, but the canon explanation for Aura cannot really be predicted at the moment.  
  
However, the nature of Semblances can be explained.  
  
What do we know:

  * Semblances are based in Aura
  * Semblances use Aura
  * Semblances are the manifestation of Aura
  * Aura is the manifestation of the Soul



What can be assumed about the nature of Aura:  
  
Aura is based on what makes a certain person that person. The idea of a human soul is the idea of self, what makes one person differ from another. Given the emphasis on individuality after the Great War, and to that point, in Hunter training, it can be assumed that individuality is incredibly important for Aura. And what is individuality other than the differences of self? With the connection between Aura and one's Soul, or personality, the connection between Semblances and personality must have some legitimacy.  
  
Beyond connecting personality to Aura to Semblance, we can see how the personality of each character with a proven semblance can be connected to their semblance.  
  
**Ren**  
  
Ren's semblance seems to be 'instantaneous calm' or, what I like to call, 'Lie Zen'. The effect of the semblance is easier to see than the cause, which seems to be acceptance of the situation as it is, no matter what. In V4E10, his village is being destroyed, his family is dying, and he has to survive, when the use of his semblance seems to make him be okay with everything that his happening, allowing him to act. Otherwise known as 'going with the flow'. Before his semblance appears to unlock, Ren's personality is rather lighthearted, simply enjoying the easy life in his village, playing with water lilies and spending time with his mother. He is going with the proverbial flow. After his semblance is unlocked, his personality seems to be the same. When Nora is bouncing around him before initiation, he does not react with anger, or frustration, with Nora's antics, only acceptance. When he is driven by an Ursa, he only asks, tiredly, to "Never do that again", and then he smiles. His personality is based upon acceptance, and his semblance is acceptance.  
  
**Ruby**  
  
Ruby's semblance is speed, and her semblance's nature can be easiest compared to Air Benders in A:TLA. Like Air Benders, she is a free nature, with a caring soul. Her hyperactivity, with her mid flitting about during conversations, and her short attention span matches her fighting style, which is to flit about the battle field, hitting dozens of times in a short period of time. Her semblance is speed, and she has a very 'fast' personality.  
  
**Yang**  
  
Yang's semblance can be best described as resilience, and no word is better for Yang. For all of her cheerfulness, Yang's had a tough life. Her mother ran away when she was a baby, her mom died when she was 6 or so, and she was left to act as a mother figure to her little sister. She nearly died soon after, giving her adult regrets at a young age. Yang was forced to grow up quickly, and yet she's still kicking. Resilience is the best word to describe Yang, and her semblance matches.  
  
**Weiss**  
  
Weiss' sense of self is defined by her family. She takes pride in being a Schnee, and places a high value on her status as heiress. Even though she hates her father, and genuinely seems to dislike the things she has to do as heiress, she is angry when her burden is lifted, showing how much value she places on the title. She identifies as Weiss Schnee, not Weiss, and her hereditary family semblance is another showing of that. Weiss's Soul is one of a Schnee, and thus her Semblance is the Schnee Semblance.  
  
**Blake**  
  
Blake's Semblance of shadow clones places emphasis on others taking the hit, while she is able to escape the blow. Her personality is best described as flighty, not allowing others to get intimate with her and running away when she feels like she will be hurt. Her semblance allows her to avoid the hit, and matches her flightiness and tendency to run.  
  
**Pyrrha**  
  
Pyrrha's Semblance is polarity, but the most important part of her ability is control. Pyrrha is always in control. In the battlefield, she is constantly moving, always aware, and always ready to make a move. In a conversation, she holds herself with confidence and keeps her posture firm. Her word choice is polite and controlled, never giving too much away. Pyrrha's control of her self is paralleled in her control of metal. She uses her semblance to keep her control, and her control of metal gives her control of the battlefield, and over her opponent. Control is the constant in Pyrrha's personality and Semblance.  
  
**Nora**  
  
Nora's Semblance is the absorption and conductivity of electricity. Electricity is a force of nature that takes the least path of resistance and is lightning quick. Nora, like Ren, goes with the flow, taking life as it goes with rapid enjoyment. She, like Ruby, flits around, has the same hyperactivity, and has the strength of electricity. Nora is a lightning bolt, bright, cheery, fast and powerful.  
  
**Glynda**  
  
For everything that Pyrrha is, Glynda is double. Glynda has the same self control that Pyrrha has, holding herself strictly and speaking with the same self control, and even more firmness. Glynda's telekinesis has the same underlying control that Pyrrha does, and her controlled personality is the same as Pyrrha's.  
  
**Qrow**  
  
Qrow's is the hardest to match to his personality, but seems to be linked to his apparent self hate. Of course, the self hating is only seen after his semblance exists, so there is a chicken and the egg scenario, but Qrow's self hate is suggested to go back beyond his semblance. He says that the Tribe "took them in", implying that Qrow and Raven were alone before joining the Tribe. Qrow's melancholy description of his time before the Tribe seems to suggest him blaming himself for their situation before the Tribe took them in. Perhaps he believes that he is bad luck before his Semblance is unlocked, and that sense of self loathing as his sense of self is the source of his Semblance. This is the weakest of all the known semblances, simply because of how little we know for certain, and it makes a couple assumptions about his past.  
  
Overall, every semblance can be connected to the character's sense of self, or their Soul, and the link between individuality and Semblance is obvious.


	13. Choice as a sign of character development (WirelessGrapes)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This essay was written by WirelessGrapes on the SpaceBattles mirror.

Choices are commonly used plot devices as a way to show the character of the characters without outright stating what their personality is.  After all, what is character other than the decisions we make?  Climaxes are defined by the 'point of no return' decisions being made by the protagonist. The major choices made by characters in Volume 4 show just how much they've grown since their arrival at Beacon Academy, particularly in the time since Volume 3.

 

Yang

The ultimatum Yang receives in the latest episode is the inspiration for this essay.  Even though her choice hasn't been actually made yet, the answers that she can give will show how she has changed.  My personal prediction is that she will go to Haven, looking for Ruby, and that will show how she is no longer internalizing her pain, but rather looking forwards.

 

Yang's story starts with her on a search for any information about her mother, leading her to find an information broker.  She describes to Blake just how much her search had taken over her life, almost taking it away.  It would be in line with her decisions up to this point to grovel on her knees to Taiyang for any information on Raven, but that's not who she is anymore.

 

Yang's Semblance is, quite literally, internalizing pain.  She takes in damage, and then uses that pain to turn to anger and does dramatic damage to whatever she hits.  When she fights, she is always looking to tank hits to boost her damage, quite masochistically.  Now, I'm not going to suggest that she looks for pain, or that she subconsciously wants to feel punishment for her actions, but actively fighting to get hit is not healthy.

 

But, in Volume 4, she learns to sidestep obstacles rather than bull rush them.  She learns that she doesn't need her pain to win.  She learns to let go.  And, with that, she lets go of the idea of Raven, and moves forwards.  Her anger and her pain is subsiding, and she can now focus on the most important person in her life, Ruby.

 

Yang's character is super interesting to me, and her complexity is amazing.

 

Of course, she could fall back into the same trap as before, and chase Raven, but that choice implies that the growth she just went through was for nothing.  That would be an interesting plot device, but that's not what M&K have been working towards.

 

Weiss

In my last Essay, I wrote about how Weiss' Semblance is related to her identity, and her choice to run away in this chapter is no different.  In Volume 3, she had been working towards being independent of her Father, yet she still follows him back to Atlas.  She sees herself as Schnee first, then Weiss.

 

Once the rug is pulled from under her, and her role as heiress is taken, she finally has the strength to throw off her father.  Throughout the Volume, we saw just how out of touch with her former role she is.  When she talks to her father, she is more worried about Vale than Atlas.  At the party, she freaks when nobody cares, when before she would have just played the game.  When Whitely is named heir, her last connection to the Schnee name is gone, and she can become Weiss.

 

This also relates to the reveal of her full summoning abilities.  She makes the decision to run at the same time she manages to summon on screen for the first time.  Her Semblance is her identity, and her choice to become her own person is directly correlated to the full awakening of her Semblance.

 

Blake

Sorry, Blake, but you're kinda boring.  Your change is pretty much stated word for word by Sun.  She learns to let people help her.  There stuff that symbolizes this change, with Blake literally shoving Sun away multiple times during the season, but the development is the most obvious of the 4 choices made.  There's not much to say there.

 

Ruby and Jaune

Note that the only reason I don't include Ren and Nora is because they had almost no character before this Volume to develop.  Their arcs are just beginning, and they lack the background depth to have their choices mean anything character wise.  In general, the things from this decision apply to them as well, but there's no evidence because they had no background.

 

RNJR's decision actually comes before the Volume, when they choose to undertake their journey.  Journeys in literature tend to be the culmination of plot development, and it shows here, but the main choice is the start.  Before Volume 4, Jaune and Ruby have fairly low self esteem.  Both are leaders who, at first glance, were bad choices for leader.  They neither have the individual strength, nor the experience to command a team, but they do so anyways.  Ruby's self doubt shows itself in the beginning of Volume 3, when she says how she chose Yang and Weiss, but then Blake undermines her by saying they voted on it.  She curls in a little on herself, letting the others take control.  Jaune, where does he _not_ have self esteem issues in Volume 3.  After he's shoved into the locker, he has a point where his face hardens, and he seems to resolve himself.  He makes the choice to not be pushed around anymore, to take life by the balls.  Ruby has a similar moment when she sees Pyrrha die.  Her shocked face turns to anger and determination as her eyes begin to flare.  She has the same moment of not being pushed around anymore.

 

During the Volume, Jaune's confidence is obvious.  In the Geist fight, he doesn't run, he doesn't cower, like he did during Breach, he stands his ground, and dodges the rocks.  Even when he gets launched into the tree, he pulls himself back up, and runs back, even without a weapon.  He's the one to give Ruby the speech in Episode 10.  Jaune is much stronger than he was, not physically, but mentally.

 

Ruby's confidence seems to grow as well.  She refuses to leave Qrow behind, pointedly taking a longer route to try for medicine.  She's not gonna be stopped by a mountain, she's gonna make her way through.  And, finally, any niggling bits of self doubt are washed away by Jaune's speech.  My prediction for the fight is that Jaune and Ruby are gonna hold strong and win together.

 

Ren and Nora's decision could be the decision to run to the destroyed village, determining that their past won't hold them back, but we have very little evidence that they were held back in the first place.

 

And so, with that, Volume 4 can be seen as a volume of choice, of taking control, of letting go, of letting people in, and of becoming yourself.


End file.
